


Shards in Darkness

by Prismatic Bell (Nina_Dances_In_Technicolor)



Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Ableism, Ableist Language, Acceptance, Autism, Autistic Character, Bullying, Eventual Romance, Intersectionality, M/M, POCecil, Universe Alteration
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-07-16
Updated: 2014-07-16
Packaged: 2018-02-09 02:50:22
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,137
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1966137
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nina_Dances_In_Technicolor/pseuds/Prismatic%20Bell
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Based on a headcanon of Cecil with autism: how it altered the course of Cecil's and Carlos' relationship, and why Carlos wouldn't have him any other way.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Shards in Darkness

**Author's Note:**

> A few assorted things to bring up before we begin:
> 
> \--I was diagnosed at age 14 with HFA/Asperger's syndrome (now both folded into the autism spectrum). This Cecil is slightly lower on the spectrum than I am, but many of Cecil's tics and behaviors are drawn directly from my own life--which is not to say he is, by any stretch of the imagination, me.  
> \--The bullying and ostracization? Yeah, I grew up in a small town. Cecil actually has it easier than I did, partly because I couldn't stomach writing about some of the stuff I went through.  
> \--I marked this for ableist language because Josie has a few habits I _really, really hated_ when they were aimed at me by doctors and parents. Having those habits does not make her a bad person. No advocate is perfect; they become perfect when you accept them as they really are. There are also those (Cecil included) who use some pretty hateful language toward Cecil. That, too, is real; nobody with autism ever said life with mental illness was a walk in a bed of roses.
> 
> And finally:
> 
> I usually title stuff after songs. I didn't do that this time. At the risk of being pretentious and self-congratulatory, I picked a title from a poem I wrote for a journal assignment in college that asked us to "describe a thing taken for granted," like trying to describe what happiness meant. I wrote about autism and the struggle to find friends and be "normal":
> 
>  
> 
> _My brain is a mirror someone threw on the stairs in a fight long ago._  
>  _The pieces are there but some are dust._  
>  _The lights are out and I am shards in darkness_  
>  _You think I am beautiful and tragic, but if you try to put me back in one piece_  
>  _I will cut you I will cut you to pieces_  
>  _And as you drip blood and ask why why why_  
>  _I will only ask you: Why could I not be whole in myself_  
>  _When a broken glass can still make a rainbow?_  
>  Nobody is claiming my college journaling is fine literature, but I would at least hazard that in this situation, it's relevant.

He has Josie to thank, he'll think, months later.

He has Josie to thank and he really should have done it before.

When the whole thing starts, though, he's just irked—stuck in the Moonlight All-Nite with a cup of mediocre coffee and a tiny, birdlike woman sliding into the booth across from him like she has every right to be there.

“You're the scientist,” she says, and Carlos feels the familiar prickle of irritation—yes, he introduced himself as a scientist, but he has a _name_ , and he told it to everyone in town that first day. The only reason nobody uses it, he suspects, is because the weirdo on the radio keeps calling him _Carlos the Scientist_. Among other things that are weirder still.

“Carlos Melendez,” he agrees. The woman smiles at him.

“Josefina Cruz,” she says. “But everyone around here just calls me Josie. I wanted to talk to you, Mr. Melendez.”

Carlos considers correcting her again—he's a doctor, he's still paying off loans on that Ph.D. after his name, the least people could do is acknowledge eight years of schooling and a published dissertation—but he's done it once already, and he doesn't want to look like an asshole. “How can I help you, Ms. Cruz?”

She gives him that enigmatic smile again. “Just Josie, please. It's about Cecil.”

Carlos gives up on any pretense at professionalism. “Oh, no,” he says. “No. No. I've already heard this from half a dozen people this week and no matter what he chooses to say on the radio I am _not_ obligated to—“

Josie looks startled. “Someone else told you?”

“Yes. And I'm here to do a job, not ask local stalkers out on dates.”

Josie manages to look distressed and furious at the same time. “Who suggested it? Tell me, Mr. Melendez, right now, please.”

Carlos shrugs. “Kid who works at the grocery store, somebody over at Big Rico's, everybody seems to think it's a big joke. I don't.”

Distress is giving way to more fury all the time on Josie's face, and Carlos wonders if he should be alarmed. He really doesn't want to mace a woman who looks so much like his grandmother.

“I should have known,” she hisses. “I should have spoken to you weeks ago. How _dare_ they—“

Carlos raises his eyebrows while Josie fumes her way into silence. At last she takes a deep breath.

“Mr. Melendez,” she says, “suggesting you should ask Cecil on a date was the furthest thing from my mind. Although I suppose you'd say it's for similar reasons I'm here.” She rests her head on her hands, fingers folded around her chin like an old-time romance novel cover. “It's difficult to know exactly what to say. I feel it's important to inform you, but at the same time, I don't want you to pity him. If that were the outcome then it would be better I shouldn't speak to you at all.”

“I think you can say whatever it is you have to say without worrying about that.” And it's a shame, really, because everybody in town seems to like Cecil. There's laughter whenever his name comes up, and it's a rare week Carlos doesn't see him at the bar on karaoke night, practicing pool shots at an unused table in the corner. He could have been a useful ally, if he wasn't such a creep.

“Cecil has no ill-intention toward you,” Josie tells him. “I suppose we should start there. Very often he says whatever comes into his head with no thought for consequences, and it creates some very unfortunate impressions.”

“You could call it that,” Carlos agrees. He wonders how long it'll take any of his assistants to come looking for him, if Josie should turn out to be as crazy as Cecil.

“Then let me ask you this, Mr. Melendez. What do you think causes it? I know the answer, but I'd like to hear your thoughts.”

“When I first got here, I thought it was some kind of town in-joke. Welcome the newcomer. A roast. That kind of thing. Now I'm pretty sure he's either secretly after my scalp to hang on his wall, or trying to drive me out of town for some reason.”

Josie shakes her head. “No,” she tells him. “Neither of those.” She reaches into a voluminous handbag and pulls out a pocketbook. “I'm going to show you something, Mr. Melendez. Most people don't know it exists. I doubt even Cecil remembers I have it. He's a dear boy, but once something is out of his sight it's not long before it's forgotten. If you have studied your human biology as well as general scientific principles, I think it will go a long way to answering your questions.”

Carlos takes the photograph she offers him. It's a wallet, not as large as he'd like for study, but it's a studio portrait and clear enough, he supposes. 

The Cecil in the portrait has a knotted mop of hair and untied sneakers. The smile on his face is neither happy nor natural—he looks nervous, like somebody told him he should stretch out the corners of his mouth and he's not sure he's doing it right. He wears thick glasses over a rumpled Nirvana shirt and torn jeans—a really weird choice for a senior portrait, in Carlos' humble opinion—but even so his eyes have drifted off to a corner of the picture instead of looking into the lens. He looks strangely formal, like he's not entirely sure how to relax his body, and something about his hands—

“He's got developmental delays.” Carlos taps photo-Cecil's fingers, the middle fingers crossed behind the ring and index on both hands, thumbs tucked tightly against his palms. “What is it? It's not a learning disability. Not one severe enough for digital folding. You can tell that listening to him.”

“Autism,” Josie says. “After his mother died he went on a rampage through the house and scratched himself out of every picture he could lay hands on. I think if he hadn't had anywhere to go he might have killed himself. His mother meant very well by him, but that doesn't mean she _did_ very well by him, if you see what I mean.” She takes the photograph back and tucks it carefully into her pocketbook. “It may be that I have the only photographs of him that still exist. When he graduated high school he put a quote from a poem in place of the portrait in the yearbook, but he had a photograph taken for me because he said he knew how much I wanted one. I have another on my piano, but I put it away when he comes.”

“Not a Kodak fan, huh?”

Josie shakes her head, and Carlos sees her lips purse. Bad joke. “He told me when he gave me this that he knew he looked like a freak, but he couldn't try any better. His life has not been easy, Mr. Melendez. Very few people know why he acts the way he does, and even those who do have little compunction about making fun of him.”

Carlos thinks about the last time he heard Cecil's name amid a smattering of laughter in the Ralph's and feels vaguely sick as he realizes it wasn't, perhaps, as friendly as he assumed. He doesn't have to like the man to know there are some things that just shouldn't be done. “Why doesn't he go somewhere he doesn't have a history?”

Josie shakes her head. “He tried, once. Signed up for a year's classes at New York University. Communications and photography. He was home in six weeks. I don't think he slept the entire time he was gone. Some people can make such a move and thrive. Cecil is not one of them.”

“And people treat him like dirt even though he's the local newscaster.” If, Carlos thinks privately, you can call some of what Cecil reports 'news.'

“I think he'd be treated much worse if he wasn't,” Josie says. “Small towns are cruel, Mr. Melendez. They can be beautiful, and full of caring, but they can also be spiteful and full of gossip. If you haven't yet learned that, you will.”

Carlos runs his hands over his face and through his hair, takes a deep breath and tries to come up with something to say.

“So he's not actually hanging around my apartment peering in the windows at night,” he manages, and Josie snorts.

“Unlikely. I'd be surprised if he 'hangs around' Big Rico's when you happen to be in there,” she says. “He knows perfectly well he says things he shouldn't. That isn't the problem.”

“The problem is, he had a man run out of town because I got my hair cut.”

“No,” Josie says, and shakes her head. “I asked Erika. There was a longstanding issue that led to Telly being . . . divinely encouraged to leave, might be the best description. He was an Outsider to start with, much like you, Mr. Melendez. But there are Outsiders, you see, and then there are Interlopers. People who would happily harm our town.”

“So it was coincidence? Sorry, Josie, I don't believe that in this town.”

“More complicated than coincidence. But if your conscience has been pricking you because of Telly, don't let it. It had nothing to do with you, and very little to do with Cecil.”

Josie looks at him, expectantly, and finally Carlos nods once.

“I'll keep it in mind,” he says, not sure what else he can say, and Josie stands up.

“A single question, Mr. Melendez,” she says, and Carlos looks up. “Is there anyone in particular in your life? Of a personal nature?”

“No,” Carlos tells her. “But that doesn't change what I—“

Josie holds up a hand to stop him. “I wouldn't ask it in a thousand years,” she says. “All I ask is that if someone _should_ come into your life, please be kind when you tell him. People so rarely are. And let it be you, not local gossip. He enjoys his little romance, onesided as it is. I imagine it will fade, given time.”

“I think I can handle that,” Carlos agrees. “If the rest of the town would stop planning our wedding.”

Josie purses her lips again. “That, I'll handle.” She pats the table. “Thank you. Cecil has enough troubles without newcomers misunderstanding him. And I think he really is quite interested in your research. He adores puzzles.”

“If you know him so well, can you tell him to just . . . tone it down a little? If I get one more intern reciting sonnets at me when I walk in the lab—my interns, not his interns,” Carlos adds, hastily, at Josie's alarmed expression. “Desiree double-majored in biology and Shakespeare and she thinks the whole thing is a riot.”

“Well,” Josie tells him. “Your interns are your problem, not mine. But I can pass on the message.”

“I'd appreciate it.”

Josie smiles again and walks off, handbag over her arm.

And Carlos pulls out his tablet and pulls up the internet.

\---------------------------------

It's actually an accident, the first time he and Cecil interact after Josie's sit-down with Carlos in the diner. And it wouldn't have happened at all if one of the pool tables wasn't broken.

But Carlos' interns like to drag him out to karaoke nights and he hates to sing, so he usually ends up in the back of the bar with whoever's up for a game of pool.

Tonight it's a grad student named Adil who's working on a master's thesis in botany, and Adil is utterly smitten with Carlos' second in command, and so when Ahava smiles at Adil and drags him up on the stage to sing a slightly off-key version of “Iris” he's practically helpless to resist.

Which leaves Carlos alone at the pool table with a half-finished game, until a quiet voice lilts out at him: “It's all about angles, you know.”

Carlos jumps and turns around. Cecil is sitting on the unlit pool table, and Carlos has to fight the urge to tell him to get down. Nobody is entirely sure _how_ the pool table is broken; all they know is that all the equipment came up missing in a single night and that when Don put a hand on the baize to get to his knees and unlock the table, it sucked at his hand. 

Nobody's felt like dealing with it yet. 

“You keep trying to bank the shot to get the four-ball in. But really all you need to do is change the angle.”

Carlos hoists the cue and holds it out. Cecil shrinks back on the table, like he thinks Carlos is going to hit him with it, and tucks his arms against his sides. Carlos sees Cecil's fingers fold over each other, and a page from his hours of reading floats out of his brain: _tics are often an unconscious form of self-comfort._

“I learned to play from this jerk I went out with three times who used the entire date as an excuse to ask if I was any good with a stick and balls. I'm serious,” he protests, when Cecil lets out a tiny squeak of a giggle. Carlos has the sudden mental image of the rest of the giggle being stuck in Cecil's larynx. Like a bad case of throat spiders. “It was terrible. I've seen you practicing back here, you must know something he doesn't.”

There's a pause long enough for Carlos to tune back into the music, and then Cecil reaches out one hand for the pool cue. 

“You want to start with a better bridge,” he says, and demonstrates, hand laying on the baize of the functional pool table. “You need to be able to slide the cue, but it can't wobble all over the place. And if you look—you know—if you hit the ball, the cueball I mean, straight on it's going to go straight and hit whatever it hits, but the shot you need to make, you can either bank it off the side which isn't going to give you a whole lot of power or you can make the ball go left, and if you want it to go left you want to hit the cue here.” He points to a spot on the cue. “It's going to put a spin on it.” He holds the cue out, like he thinks actually demonstrating would be a violation of Carlos' aborted game, and then, when Carlos doesn't take it, slowly lowers the cue to his own bridge—“four in the left middle pocket”—and makes the shot.

Carlos hears Adil whistle and wonders when he got back. He was onstage in the middle of an everlasting musical bridge just a minute ago, Carlos is sure of it. The four goes into the pocket Cecil named. The two skitters up into the far right pocket, and the five almost tips into another corner pocket before deciding it wants to sit right where it is and give Carlos an impossible to miss second shot.

“Nice one,” Adil says, and Cecil's elbows tuck back against his sides. He gives a single abrupt nod and hands the cue into Carlos' general direction.

“Anyway that's—that's. Angles. That's why they're important,” he mumbles, and now he's not even pretending to look in Carlos' general direction. He's staring down at the floor, instead, and Adil is giving him the same kind of look Carlos did until a few days ago: _weirdo._ Carlos bites on his own tongue before he can suggest Cecil should stick around and teach him how to kick Adil's ass, which could actually be pretty fun but could also give Cecil entirely the wrong idea.

“I'll have to practice forever to get _that_ smooth,” he says instead, and Cecil tucks his head down further. “No wonder you're back here all the time.”

Cecil bites his lip, and realization hits Carlos squarely in the gut: Cecil doesn't practice alone for fun.

Cecil practices alone because nobody has ever asked him to play.

Carlos hefts the cue. “I was gonna go get another beer, you should finish out the game,” he says. “I'm not going to win anyway. You might stand a shot at turning the tables.”

Cecil hesitates and takes the cue. Adil stares at Carlos like he's been betrayed. Carlos claps him on the shoulder.

“You want another?”

“Make it a tall one,” Adil says, and Carlos rolls his eyes.

“I don't care if you're hungover tomorrow, I will still call you and get your ass out of bed if you're not in the lab at eight o'clock.”

Adil mutters something Carlos deliberately pretends not to catch. “Guess it's your turn.”

Cecil jumps. Then he takes the impossible to miss shot, and misses. Adil stares at Carlos: _is he an idiot?_ Carlos finds Adil's foot and steps on it.

By the time he gets back from ordering his and Adil's beer and a refill of whatever it is Cecil is having—he doesn't want to be rude—there are half a dozen interns around the pool table watching Cecil finish what might well have been a one-turn game; Adil has a single ball off the table and Cecil is down to the fourteen and the eight. Adil is giving Cecil the _oh hell no you don't I'm the pool king in this group you're going down_ stare and Cecil is grinning nervously down at the table.

The 14 goes in. Cecil aims for the eight and misses the shot by a hair.

Adil scratches.

Cecil takes the eight in the corner: an easy shot.

There's a minor uproar involving Ahava and Irina and which of them won the bet, and Soren slapping Cecil on the back and yelling something about revenge, and Adil looking incredibly pissed off until Cecil bites his lip and looks down and tries to stutter out an apology. Finally Adil snorts and holds out a hand.

“Good game, man.”

There's a pause, and then Cecil takes Adil's hand to shake.

“You too.”

Adil laughs. “If I'd got more than two turns I would've kicked your ass.”

“I'm sorry. I—I mean I—“

“Don't be sorry, winner pays first next time. You're better than Carlos, he always loses.” 

“Not 'always',” Carlos protests, and hands Adil a beer (not made with wheat or any byproduct thereof, and not as good as Carlos' beloved Hop Sun but at least it's alcohol) and then gives Cecil a glass the bartender insisted was a mint julep, and Cecil jumps and almost drops it. “Not always. Last week I beat you twice and all it cost me was staying sober.”

“I—I actually needed to—I mean—thank you,” Cecil finishes up, hopelessly, and sips it. The bar is dim, but Carlos can still see the tension in Cecil's mouth and the way his fingers fold under each other again on the glass. Behind him, Adil is arguing with Irina about who owes whom a margarita.

“You don't have to take it if you're leaving,” Carlos says, voice low, body turned carefully away from his flock of eager students. “I'm not, I don't know, offended or something. I just didn't realize you were going to knock him out that fast.”

Cecil's answering nod is jerky, and his eyes skitter over Carlos' hands and nowhere near his face before his fingers clench on the glass.

“I—I probably should, I have—tomorrow before the show I've got a meeting,” he says, fast, all in a rush, and Carlos decides not to call him on the lie. “But thank you.”

By the time Irina dismisses Adil and looks up to challenge Cecil to a game, he's already long gone.

\-----------------------------------------------------

“He came in to get his nails painted again,” Carlos hears at the Ralph's, the same week everyone starts going nuts over a man in a tan jacket. He's not really paying attention, except in the same way he supposes anybody anywhere pays attention in case something particularly amusing out of context comes up, but then he hears one of the women talking behind him try to do a not-particularly-good but still unmistakeable impression of Cecil, and he's all ears. Metaphorically. Literally, he has only the two he was born with, which is probably a good thing. “'Do you have purple? Like . . . a brighter one?' Does he think he's a twelve-year-old girl or something? Because seriously, it's creepy, he barely says a word and he'll just sit there with his eyes closed, I swear he gets off on it or something—“

“Or maybe he just really likes bright colors,” Carlos says, loudly, not turning around from the tomatoes. “And just _maybe_ , when people go to get pedicures, they're doing it to relax, and don't need to make conversation with you for forty minutes about who's sleeping with who.”

He does turn, then, and offers his best I'm-a-scientist-nothing-about-this-is-impressive stare to the two girls behind him. One is about nineteen, with brown flatironed hair and a tied-off shirt. The other one is blonde and in her last year of college. Carlos knows them, kind of, in the “so-and-so's girlfriend, such-and-such's cousin” way he's finding is common in small towns, or at least in Night Vale. The younger one works at the salon. The older one is studying to be an English teacher.

“Whom,” she says, but still forgets to put their peaches in their basket. “It's the indirect object.”

“And it's going to be directly bad for business if word gets out you're out in public mocking your sister's paying customers for their choice in nail polish,” Carlos tells her. They both stare at him blankly.

“It's just Cecil, nobody cares,” the brunette one says, and the next thing Carlos says is entirely unintentional:

“I care.”

“Of course _you_ care, he'd probably cut off your dick if you didn't, or something,” the older one says. The younger one looks a little stunned. Carlos doesn't even bother rolling his eyes. He's heard college students entranced with their own ability to use crude language before.

“He's actually been one of the kindest people in town to me since I got here,” Carlos rebuts. “And if you actually plan to make a go of that teaching career your mother told me you wanted—“ and just like that he finally places her face, knows her for certain—“you'll learn pretty quickly that being a judgmental asshole doesn't pay, Ashley.”

He turns back to the tomatoes. He's going to have spaghetti tomorrow and he doesn't care if he has to pick through a thousand tomatoes that smell mysteriously like cabbage, _he is going to make his own sauce_.

Behind him is nothing but silence. They're still there, he can tell they haven't moved, but they've both been shocked into silence. Suddenly he hears a too-loud yell across the entire produce section—“Hey, _Earl!_ ”—and wishes he could tell them to clear out without being overly obvious. 

Cecil darts across the produce section with his messenger bag flopping against his hip and his neatly-braided hair bouncing up and down between his shoulderblades. His fingernails, Carlos notices, are extremely purple. Somewhere in the 1990s was a trendy young woman who wore a plastic skirt that color and never imagined the hue would end up on the hands of a radio host doing his best to match it to a pair of screamingly-loud Chuck Taylors that just about have to be a relic of the same time period.

He skids to a stop next to a man who reminds Carlos forcibly of Michael Clarke Duncan and wears a keyring so large Carlos would bet it makes his pants sag on that side, and immediately starts sorting out jalapenos and apparently picking up a sentence mid-conversation. Carlos wonders if Earl Harlan is as confused as he is, or if this is just a thing Cecil does with his few real friends so often that they're all used to it.

Behind Carlos, the girls suddenly come back to life. One of them mutters “freak” as they decamp. Carlos resists the urge to help her on her way by marching her firmly to the door. Across the produce section, Earl gestures to Cecil's hands and gets a disarmingly huge grin in return. When Cecil grins that way, Carlos thinks, he looks like he's about fourteen, laugh lines and soft belly and all; Cecil has moments when he smiles, really and truly smiles for joy instead of the sad bared-teeth parody in Josie's photographs of him, and he raises the light in the room by what Carlos feels must almost be a measurable amount of watts. Earl's mouth moves, and Cecil laughs a little too loudly for being in a grocery store. Earl drops an arm around Cecil's shoulders before aiming a narrow stare back into the rest of the produce section. Carlos tips him a salute—gets a miniscule nod in response—and ambles off with his tomatoes.

They're still in the produce section when Carlos goes through checkout. Cecil is picking up plums, turning them over critically, and then sifting a very select few into a pair of piles. As Carlos runs his card he sees Cecil dump one of the piles back into the bin and frown at the four or five he's got left. Carlos wonders if Cecil actually just emptied an entire produce bin looking for plums. Earl puts a hand on Cecil's elbow and hands him a produce bag, and leads him gently away with his bag of plums tucked into the messenger bag before Cecil can go digging through what's left in the bin again.

It doesn't matter. Carlos has a sauce to start and two microbe cultures to check in on and a clock he needs to take apart because of some really strange readings and an intern who called him in the middle of the paper products aisle to shriek into the phone about readings from Radon Canyon, and he should really go pick her up before she tears open her hazmat suit in a fit of hysteria. Cecil and his issues and his beautiful smile are no problems of Carlos' this afternoon.

He's halfway to the canyon when a canned spot on the radio jags his memory and reminds him of Cecil laughing in the Ralph's, and then he replays the entire encounter with Earl and Cecil in his head trying to figure out what's up with those two, anyway, and then he wonders why he cares and then—

 _Shit,_ he thinks, dismayed. 

Cecil and his issues and his beautiful smile are, in fact, problems of Carlos' this afternoon. Big ones.

Later that afternoon he makes a phone call to Cecil about just what he finds in that clock, and the one on his nightstand, and the one he pries down off the wall of the lab.

He's very careful to say he's calling for professional reasons.

\------------------------------------

“I don't have any other shoes.”

Carlos doesn't bother asking. Every table in the bar is packed—every table except the little one in the back, where it's just Cecil and a Long Island iced tea. Carlos plunks down opposite him with a rum and coke and wishes fervently for whiskey, now banned in Night Vale because of wheat. Cecil takes in a great sniff of air and stares down at his drink.

“I washed them out as soon as the show ended but my socks are still all red and I—“

Carlos backs up as Cecil gags on the memory of whatever was on the other side of that strange vortex. He hasn't discussed it, and nobody, apparently, has asked.

“You okay?”

Cecil shakes his head. “There was. Blood. _Everywhere_. Probably an inch deep on the floor, I. Somebody died in there. Recently. Lots of somebodies, I think.” He sucks down the rest of his drink in a single gulp. Carlos holds up a hand—another round for Cecil, something that isn't godawful rum and watery Coca-Cola for himself. Someone deposits another Long Island for Cecil and a vodka-tonic for Carlos. He stares down mournfully at it.

“Jack Daniel's doesn't contain wheat, you know, I looked it up,” he tells the server, who just shrugs and mutters something about policy before plodding off to refill someone's beer. Carlos sighs and tosses off half the drink in one go. Cecil sips his new drink and shudders like he's cold. Carlos looks down at the table. It's not a social night. It's not meant to be a social night. The town is still covered in dust and, now, blood from strange doppelgangers. Carlos finishes the rest of his drink.

“Scientifically speaking, there's this theory that if you actually saw a clone of yourself you wouldn't recognize it as being you, because your own perception of what you look like is so unlike your actual appearance,” he says. “Which makes today impossible. I locked myself in the lab because I could see myself standing outside it trying to get in and I still know it's impossible.”

“I'm afraid to go home.”

“I can take you. I've got the car, because of the storm. Give me half an hour before I drive.”

Cecil smiles for the first time all night, a pale, wan little sliver of lips and teeth that doesn't even get up to the level of his smile-because-you-ought-to smile. “It's not the walk. It's the silence. It's so _quiet_ now, it's. You can hear it. There are all kinds of silence, Carlos, but what's waiting in my apartment is pure absence of sound and I . . . I don't think I can handle it. Tonight.” There's a long pause. “Maybe I'll sleep in the breakroom.”

“You could go to Josie's,” Carlos suggests, and Cecil's head snaps up like he's been stung by bees. Even the pale smile is gone now.

“What?”

“I said, you could go to Josie's,” Carlos repeats, and then he plays it back in his head as Cecil's mouth thins down to a pinched little line. “What I mean is—“

“She told you,” Cecil says, in a harsh whisper. “She promised she wouldn't, she said it was nobody's business but my—“

“Hey, she's right,” Carlos cuts in. “All I'm saying is, if you don't want to be alone, she has to have a couch or a spare bed or something that's not being used. I could take you. You can tell me why nobody here believes mountains exist while we're on the way.”

There's a long minute where Cecil's eyes flutter over Carlos' hands and shoulders before flicking up to his face and then, just as quick, away again. Carlos stays where he is and waits for the second flick. He's been here long enough to know it's coming. Cecil bites his lip, and Carlos watches his fingers fold in on themselves. 

“I appreciate it, but I'd better not,” he says, and takes another sip of his drink. He doesn't elaborate, and after he drains his drink he stands up awkwardly. “Thank you for sitting with me.”

He leaves on a straight line the drinks apparently couldn't alter, and Carlos stares at the empty glass across from him. Cecil might just be thrown by the sandstorm and his bloody double, but Carlos doesn't think so.

He's waiting for pity, Carlos thinks. Waiting for it and dreading it. Carlos shakes his head. He doesn't pity Cecil; feels badly for him in the face of mean-spirited comments and snickers, yes, but no more than he would anyone, he doesn't think. If anyone, he pities the people who stopped at Cecil's strange posture and nonsequitur language and never discovered his kindness and incredible ability to be joyful bordering on naive in the face of the hardest setbacks. 

The way Carlos did, when he first got to town, before he learned to navigate Cecil's idiosyncracies.

And, Carlos thinks, stirring his drink, that incredible smile too many people try to put out. Cecil expressed his admiration for Carlos' own middle-class-braces grin, but Carlos thinks Cecil has the better deal: a slanted gap between large and square front teeth, and the kind of incisors Carlos has heard referred to as “tiger fangs.” Carlos' smile is generic and can be bought for a couple grand at any orthodontist in the country; Cecil's has character. 

It also has an overbite that can't possibly be good for his jaw, but Carlos elects to ignore the overbite.

He remembers what Cecil said about his double—that _smile_ , and those terrible eyes—and realizes with a sudden jolt that he's never actually noticed Cecil's eyes. He's pretty good at observing people, docketing important facts and data, and Cecil is no exception, up to a point. Biracial male, average height, just a little thicker than what Carlos would call average build. Shoulder-length black hair, full lips, great smile, he's the picture of an average black American male, except that after almost nine months Carlos has never seen his eyes head-on long enough to so much as catalogue their color. Brown is the obvious answer outside of Night Vale, but Carlos wouldn't put it past them to be blue or black or pink and orange checked, for that matter.

He's going to have to find out. It's imperative. 

Maybe, at the same time, he can tell Cecil without sounding too much like an asshole that all he's been told is enough to know Cecil's awkward manners and lack of tact aren't intended to be rude.

And his secret is safe with Carlos.

 

\-----------------------------------

Cecil is drunk.

Cecil is _extremely_ drunk, Carlos thinks, when he gets to the bar and sees Cecil crumpled over a table instead of working on trick shots. There's a mostly-empty glass in front of him, and when Carlos sits down he can smell it, noticeably, on Cecil's breath. Cecil doesn't look up.

“I never knew,” he says, and Carlos watches as his hands fold from tic to tic with no pauses between. “Stupid, _stupid_ , I've known him my entire life and he didn't exactly make a _secret_ of it, Shawn asked me if I really didn't know, and I'm too much of a—“

“He should have said something to you directly,” Carlos cuts in, before Cecil can bring out the word Carlos really doesn't want to hear him use, the one the girl at the salon directed at him that long-ago day at the grocery store: _freak_. “He knew about your problems. He shouldn't have expected you to sift through a bunch of hints. That's on him, not you.”

Cecil's eyes close, and Carlos watches tears trickle down his cheeks. “And now you know too.” His fingers twitch, like he wants to pull his hands away. “Josie said she talked to you.”

“She did,” Carlos says, because Cecil is both too drunk and too distraught to appreciate even the level of subtlety he can normally pick up on. “So I could understand you better. No other reason, Cecil, I promise.”

Cecil's eyes open, and now Carlos knows just how drunk he is: Cecil isn't looking him in the eyes, exactly, but they're turned far enough in Carlos' direction that Carlos can see flat fear in them.

“I'm supposed to go grocery shopping tomorrow,” he whispers. “It's Tuesday.” Then he actually does meet Carlos' eyes, and Carlos very nearly faints from shock. Maybe Cecil should practice with a good friend and a bottle of liquor—if he has any good friends left, after today. “How am I supposed to go grocery shopping without Earl?”

Carlos thinks about all the times he's seen Cecil stalled out in various parts of the grocery store, apparently stymied when his rice was replaced by a new brand or there wasn't a bunch of bananas that adequately matched what he wanted, and realizes that almost every single time he's also seen Earl, gently selecting new rice or solving Cecil's fruit problems. Cecil isn't picky, exactly— _autism patients often seek patterns and routines and indicate discontent and anxiety when these are interrupted,_ Carlos read during the Great Autism Research Binge, and the Ralph's is in the terrible habit of rearranging shelves at least once a month and swapping out products on a semiregular basis. 

No wonder Cecil is afraid of groceries.

“I can take you,” Carlos says. “Do you have a list you follow or something?”

“Earl kept my list. I never used it, he did. In case things changed. He was my best friend since Scouts, he watched out for things like that.” Cecil's shoulders tense, and Carlos gapes as Cecil slaps himself, hard, across the face. Carlos seizes his hand and pulls it back down, then fishes a couple of ice cubes out of his drink and plops them in a napkin to hold to Cecil's cheek.

“Okay,” Carlos tells him, like nothing happened. “I'll take care of it. We'll go shopping tomorrow. I need to pick up some soup anyway.” He doesn't—Carlos hates canned soup—but Cecil is starting to look distressed again, in the please-don't-trouble-yourself kind of way. “Come on, let's go.”

“It's Monday,” Cecil protests. “And I think the Ralph's is closed anyway but it's _Monday_.”

“Not to the Ralph's,” Carlos says. “I'm taking you home.”

“I don't want to go home, I want to get another drink. Earl's dead.”

“I'll tell you what, Cecil, stand up and walk to the stairs and back and if you're still on a halfway straight line, _I'll_ buy your drink. Otherwise you go home.”

Cecil gives him a terribly petulant look, but stands obediently and heads for the stairs. He makes it four whole steps before walking straight into a chair. Carlos pulls him off the floor and casts a glare around the mostly-empty barroom. Nobody is paying them any attention. He's perfectly okay with that.

Cecil, Carlos discovers once they're on their way, is a creepily silent drunk. He's not sure if it's weird because Cecil normally chatters away at the speed of light or if it's weird because nobody should be that quiet, but he hears so little during the drive that he actually checks four times to make sure Cecil hasn't vanished right out of the car.

He doesn't have to knock. Josie is already on the front stoop. Carlos almost asks how, and then he sees a very tall shape flit from end to end of the porch and disappear, and he realizes it's a stupid question. Erika. With a K. Of course. 

Josie sees Cecil and holds out her arms, and Carlos guides Cecil carefully up the steps and into the hug that's waiting for him. It occurs to him a second too late that he has no idea how Cecil feels about being touched right now, and then Cecil drops his forehead to Josie's shoulder and lets out a loud and braying sob that sounds horribly like the cries of a heartbroken child. Something deep in Cecil's life just shattered, and Carlos takes a step away as Josie puts a hand on the back of Cecil's head.

“Oh, my dear,” she says, and strokes Cecil's hair. “My poor dear.” She looks up at Carlos. She's trying to telegraph a question with her eyes, but Carlos isn't getting it. A voice very far above and behind him says _you need to make tea_ in a way Carlos doesn't exactly hear with his ears, and he nods at the front door. Josie nods back, and Carlos heads inside to navigate her kitchen.

He finds a box of chamomile with rose hips, which seems like a good choice, and by the time Josie coaxes Cecil off the porch and into the kitchen it's strong and hot. Josie uses her free hand to wave at a cupboard. Carlos opens it and finds a jar of honeycomb, opens it, offers it to her. She drizzles some in a cup with the milk Carlos found in the fridge, deposits Cecil at the table, and puts the cup in his hands. The look she turns on Carlos makes him feel like he somehow failed something both basic and fundamental, like understanding Mendel's pea experiments or the basic concept of gravity.

“I didn't want to leave him alone,” he says at last, voice low as Josie joins him at the counter while Cecil sips his tea. “He was drunk and I was pretty sure he was going to hurt himself if he could put enough hand-eye coordination together. Hurt himself worse, I should say, he . . . he slapped himself.”

Josie sighs. “He's blaming himself. Today has not been easy for anyone, but for Cecil . . . I don't suppose he told you how they met?”

“Scouts?”

“Yes,” she agrees. “Their first day. Two of the older boys took Cecil's sash. They taunted him with it, held it out over the edge of the canyon and told him real Scouts could jump for their sashes. I think he very nearly did it. He was overexcited to start with and according to Earl's telling of the story, Cecil was standing there with his hands over his eyes. It's a very old habit and he grew out of it eventually, but in those days it always meant trouble, and Earl didn't mean to see him commit accidental suicide. So he pulled off his own sash and told the boys every Scout should face the same tests. He had relatives on City Council. Nobody was going to lay a hand on him.”

Carlos glances over at Cecil, Scouting days long behind him and wearing the closest thing he has to a uniform: a pair of jeans and an NVCR tee-shirt. Cecil's head is bowed, the cup still in his hands. It looks like he's sipping what's inside. Good.

“What'd they do, give up?”

Josie lets out a snort. “Of course not. Such boys never do. Earl's was thrown on the ground, Cecil's went over the edge, and Earl went over after it. He climbed halfway down the canyon freehand over a silly little piece of fabric they could have replaced right out of the box. Cecil would have gladly died for him, long after the original reason was forgotten. Earl helped him earn most of his badges and tutored him all the way through college. Not because he needed the academic help, you understand, but because he needed the focus.” Josie shakes her head. “I'd sooner have died myself than had Cecil lose that boy.”

Carlos thinks about reminding her that the “boys” in question are—were—both in their mid-thirties, and one of them is developing strands of gray in his hair. Then he decides not to bother. To Josie, he imagines, both of them are—were—stuck permanently somewhere in their teens, clumping up and down her front stairs in muddy sneakers and having to be reminded to keep the volume _down_ , boys, nobody needs music that loud, Earl maybe already doing things like squeezing Cecil's hands to comfort him and cutting idioms out of his speech. 

“What happened to the boys?”

“They're dead too,” Cecil says from the table, so suddenly Carlos jumps. “Mark Li got bitten by a rattlesnake that October and Jamie Hutchinson was killed in acid rain the spring after. They're dead, Earl's dead, everybody's dead.” He clamps his lips together. Carlos really hopes Josie was planning on mopping her floor sometime soon, because he has the sneaking suspicion it's going to be necessary. Josie sighs and shakes her head.

“Thank you for bringing him,” she says, and nods toward the living room. Carlos is only too happy to comply. 

“I told him I'd take him for groceries tomorrow,” Carlos tells her, as they stand on the front porch while Cecil finishes his tea. “Can you remind him when he sobers up a little?”

Josie shakes her head. “I'll send Erika,” she says. “It'll be everything I can do to get him to work on Wednesday. I know you mean well, but . . . this could take some time, Mr. Melendez.”

“Carlos is fine,” he tells her, and glances at the rectangle of yellow light that is the kitchen doorway. “And I understand. He needs people who know him better than I do right now.”

“Yes,” Josie agrees. “Although I think when he's back to himself your kindness will mean a great deal to him, Carlos.”

“I'll see him in town, then,” Carlos says, and opens the front door.

As he does, he wonders why it hurts so damned much to walk out.

 

\------------------------------

In spite of Night Vale's location ostensibly somewhere in California, its star patterns don't match any observatory map that actually charts the Northern Hemisphere sky, Carlos thinks.

Parts of it are so full of tiny pinpricks of light that Carlos feels he's back at the beginning of time; parts of it are so empty and starless, all broken constellations and darkness, that it's quite the opposite, like he's standing at the very edge of the end of days. Carlos has drunk-dialed exactly once in his life, and it was here, in Night Vale, to Adil, after spending forty fruitless minutes with a star chart: _I figured it out,_ he said, _all of it. Night Vale is actually Milliways' fucking Bar and we're all at the end of the universe._

Adil told him to get a shower and sleep it off.

Carlos is more embarrassed about swearing at one of his interns than he is about his drunken hypothesis.

Privately, he still thinks it might actually be right.

It would explain how his finger is still hovering over the send button, for example, when Cecil is wheeling up on his bike and the radio station is fifteen minutes' walk from here. It might also explain why Cecil reminds him vaguely of Ford Prefect in that godawful movie, even though he looks nothing like Ford Prefect. If anyone in Night Vale were to walk around carrying a book that says _Don't Panic_ in large and friendly letters, admonishing people not to forget their government mandated and approved towels, it would be Cecil.

Cecil is babbling something about mysteries to be explored and terrible dangers Night Vale might be in. Carlos pays attention to none of it. He's gotten a lot better at speaking Cecil in the last year, and he translates the long and dramatic sentence with ease: _Josie told me to stop fawning and making you uncomfortable, and I'm starting to think you don't see me, so let's pretend I'm here for professional reasons._

Except, Carlos thinks, that with the knowledge that Cecil just says whatever's on his mind without the filter of such things as tact and appropriateness, Cecil's crush is actually a hell of a lot less creepy than the freshman coed in Carlos' first year as a teacher who told him she just _couldn't_ fail his class and then plopped down on his desk in a miniskirt and loudly insinuated things that could have ended his career right then, had the door been open. After he'd gotten rid of her, he'd called his brother. _We got married about ten minutes ago because I had to get this girl out of my office,_ Carlos had said, putting the photograph from last Christmas back on the shelf where it belonged and filling Claudio in on the crazy college-porno cliché he'd just had waltz into his office. _Thought you ought to know. If we're not honeymooning in Bali, I want a divorce._

Claudio'd roared laughter and said _Oklahoma_ Carlos'd called him a cheap son of a bitch, and then they'd both laughed, and when Carlos shared the story in the breakroom the following semester he'd gotten laughter there, too. At Christmas following Claudio gave him a ring he promised had come from only the best of cereal boxes, and then told the entire damned story to about thirty members of the extended Melendez family.

They all thought it was hilarious. 

Carlos is pretty sure it was so funny because he and Claudio are identical twins. 

But he kept the ring, and sometimes he wears it when he needs his brother's good luck.

He was wearing it today, when he made his plans to examine the city under Lane Five, and while he's not particularly superstitious he can't deny the moment of dread he felt when he saw the advancing tiny army and held his hands up and realized the ring was gone.

Teddy Williams found it on the floor of the bowling alley. Carlos still has it with him, but it's tucked into his pocket this time; some other time Cecil might find the story of Carlos pretend-marrying his twin amusing, but right now he's pretty sure they're both too emotionally drained for amusement, and he's not up to explaining even in the most cursory way the presence of a ring that was doubtless made in China to soup up Claudio's Frosted Flakes with a little lead poisoning.

He fingers the ring through the denim: please, he thinks, please oh please whatever deity may happen to be listening do not let Cecil collapse into overload soup. 

And then he says “Nothing.” He says “I just wanted to see you.”

Cecil's mouth drops open, and Carlos watches his fingers fold up and then, miraculously, unfold again. Carlos pats the trunk of the car, and Cecil hops up to sit with him. 

He tells Cecil again about the clocks and the sunset, and then he says that things can appear strange or malevolent at first but be innocent all the time.

He hopes Cecil understands what he's talking about.

He hopes Cecil realizes what he's saying is without malice.

He puts a hand gingerly on Cecil's knee, trying to gauge if it's safe to actually touch him or if Cecil will just fold up and cringe away. 

He'd like to ask, but he's pretty sure if he did Cecil would burst into tears. Behind the thick lenses of his glasses, his eyes already look red and sore. Carlos would blame it on the arc-sodiums in the parking lot, but the parking lot lights shorted out two days after the lights appeared above the Arby's, and have resisted all attempts at their being fixed.

Cecil sighs and rests his head on Carlos' shoulder, and Carlos relaxes. Cecil probably still feels like shit, but at least he's calming down. He shifts, and Carlos wrinkles his nose and twitches. Cecil jerks away. Carlos rubs his nose. 

“Your hair tickled, sorry,” he says, and before Cecil can jump into a flurry of apologies he reaches out to run a hand through the cloud of curls on Cecil's head. Instead his fingers get caught, and Cecil actually giggles before reaching up to untangle him.

“It's really kinky,” he apologizes. “You should try running a brush through it any time we get anything like humidity. I mean—not _you_ should, brushing it in humidity in general is what I—“

Carlos puts a single finger on Cecil's mouth and watches his lips part in surprise.

“I understand,” he says. He thinks about saying that his own hair is just as bad as Cecil's, albeit from thickness rather than such tight curls; he thinks about saying that Cecil's hair is natural, and he shouldn't need to explain it away.

Instead he puts an arm around Cecil's shoulders and hears him gasp out a little _oh_ before putting his head back where it was and shifting around to keep his hair off Carlos' face.

“I got you a trophy,” Cecil tells him, as they stare up at the kind of flashing, blinking lights Carlos long ago relegated to only cheap science fiction. “To celebrate. Most people don't stay in Night Vale this long.”

Most people don't _live_ in Night Vale this long, Carlos thinks, and then he thinks _a trophy? Really?_

And then it occurs to him that Cecil—who very often turns up at the grocery checkout with rice and beans and a lot of creative ways to create variations thereof—spent money he probably couldn't afford and risked an incredible amount of ridicule to purchase something for him, unnecessary and strange as it is.

“Thanks,” he says, and then “I didn't know if I'd stay, but the edible rocks really sealed the deal. They taste like chicken, you know.”

Cecil starts laughing—not just uneasy, overloaded giggles, but actual laughter, teeth flashing and eyes closed, and Carlos very nearly asks him home right then.

The only thing stopping him—and later he'll be glad it did—is a sudden cough from a bush that definitely wasn't growing out of the asphalt ten minutes ago, and he doesn't want to look like a hormonal fool who's still bleeding slightly under his shirt. Not, at least, in front of the Sheriff's Secret Police, tonight.

Cecil finally winds down to giggles, and Carlos feels Cecil's entire body untense. Then he looks up at the sky.

“Weather's probably about done,” he says, and Carlos can hear the regret in his voice. “I should get back to the station.”

“You—you came here _during work_?”

“You asked for me,” Cecil answers, like it's the most normal thing in the world. “I don't do it often. Usually for interns.”

He slips off the car, and Carlos watches his shoulders tense and his fingers fold before he turns, suddenly, and pecks Carlos' temple before shrinking back. It's terribly inappropriate, and Carlos should tell him so; should explain to him that kisses should be given, not stolen. But Cecil is already backing away, trembling, and Carlos realizes he doesn't have to say a word. Cecil knows. Knows, and probably thinks Carlos will avoid him like so many others in town after tonight's broadcast, where he broke down and cried over a man he's very occasionally shared a table with at the bar.

In Cecil's world, happy endings are for other people.

Carlos leans forward and grabs Cecil's hand before he can get out of reach. Cecil gasps.

“We should go for coffee,” Carlos says. “Some other time, I mean. I know you have to get back.”

Cecil stares like he's lost the ability to breathe. Then he nods, once, and his fingers twitch in Carlos' hand. Carlos lets go, and Cecil backs toward his bike, swings a leg over and trips the kickstand. It's an old bike. Carlos would be willing to bet Cecil's had it since before his mother died.

He watches until the little blinking light on the back of Cecil's bike winks out of sight a block away, and then he gets off the trunk and back into the car. 

He should probably call Josie before he calls Cecil. 

But not tonight.

**Author's Note:**

> Still here? Not terrified yet? You can find me at prismatic-bell.tumblr.com for more random musings and the ramblings of a madwoman.


End file.
